Baseball Mogul 2007

First. I am not by any means one of those baseball numbers guys, but, I am a fan. It's just to bad that I'm here in Detroit, with the Tigers, and they couldn't seem to put together a winning season for thier lives. Until this year, that is. They seem to be doing well. Second. I like baseball games even though I may not be that good at them. Usually I go with the game where I get to bat, and pitch and what not, but I think I would try something else on for a change. Hence, Baseball Mogul 2007.

Baseball Mogul 2007 is a mostly text based game that allows you to make trades, set line ups, set prices in your stadium, and all sorts of other stats that are lost on the baseball layman. You pick your team (in my case The Tigers), the difficulty level, and the rosters (real or not), and then your off. You choose to either watch the games as the General Manager, or you can play as the Manager. Playing as the Manager allows you to guess pitches, call for steals, sacrifice bunts, things like that. What you dont do, is actually swing the bat. That's taken care of by the AI in the game. During pitching times, it allows you to choose which pitch and where it goes. In this sense similar to if you were playing say MLB '06, of MLB 2K. You can play game by game, or simulate a week, a whole month, or there is a option to allow you to simulate multiple seasons at once. That's the overall jist of the game in a nutshell. Now onto the other little things though.

The 'good stuff'. LOTS of options. So many options you can get lost. While the ability to get lost in the options might be a bad thing, I found that searching around, I was able to dig out the options that I wanted most, and tweak them to my liking. You have a set of 'slider options' for Offense, Defense, Pitching, Running, and the like. I found that in the month where I sat as Gm and did the games, that my guys weren't tagging up on flies, and weren't trying for that extra base. The Tigers may not be the greatest team, but stat wise they seemed to have some speed and where not using it. I changed that. It seemed to help them. A little. (no fault of the actual game). There's a whole set of tracking stuff, HR Leaders, AVG Leaders, which team is on top, a news section that shows you trades, and ERA, and all kinds of good stuff. I loved the Headlines option that gave you a look at the weeks games and good plays or loses, in some cases. Like when I played the Royals and the pitcher threw like 12 Strike Outs. Hmmm.
Farm Teams, and AAA. There are A LOT of players in the line ups. You can move players around from farm league, and minors, up to the majors, and back again. Each playerhas a 'card' to look at. It tells you thier stats for the week, or month, plus what they did last year. What they are good at, what they suck at, and a little smiley or sad face to let you know how they feel and why.
In the patch they just released, even when you play games as a General Manager, and start a game it doesn't just start anymore. You are allowed to make changes. Which is nice. Previously the game would just start going on you. Kinda eh, if you ask me.

The 'bad stuff'. Sadly. I found more about this game that I felt needed improvement, than I did the stuff that I liked. When you have the game paused during GM mode, you have no access to the menus. I can't think of any reason that this might make the game not balanced, so I don't see why it's set up that way.
Something I would have REALLY liked. A game speed slider. The game moves a little to fast to follow everything that goes on. The pitcher, what he pitched, how fast, where. Did the hitter hit it? Did he reach on error. A slider to allow the game to be slowed down a bit would have been fantastic. On this note as well. A 'do not advance to next inning' option would have been great to. I had a couple times where a pitcher had a HORRID inning towards the end and would have liked to have made sure there was someone in the bullpen before the next part of the inning began.
The graphics. Everything works in windows, which is fine, I didn't have a problem with that. What I did think was a little blah was that the graphics were definitely sub par. Player graphics, when they were there, were jaggy. The fields in the middle of the screen all looked the same.
I wish there had been a training area. At least I didn't see one. Something where you could choose things the team needed to work on to get better. Or things that players needed to work on to get better. Batting practice. Pitching practice, fielding. Something to keep the players going in between games. With all the stuff you can do. You can't have the guys practice. Not that I found anyways.
Rosters. Even though I saved my roster movements. They never seemed to stick. I saved em, closed done, and moved on to the game. Trying to add batters into a roster who would be better against a certain pitcher. Or changing my pitcher to server better against the other team. It never stuck. My movements between minors and majors did. Not the roster changes though. Poo.

The wishlist. and mediocre stuff. I would liked to have something that showed me a batters hitting streak or cold streak. It would have been nice to see a hot/cold zone, for batter and pitchers as well. In the batting box. To help me when I was doing the pitching, and such. Minor things. I think they could have made the game more enjoyable though. I didn't find that I enjoyed being the manager that much. I enjoyed more, my ability to select who played and where. Which was still hampered, sadly.

In the end. I found that I really wanted to like this game. I kept coming back to it. I kpet trying to figure out what it was that I couldn't get done. Why it was that I couldn't get my line ups to stick. This game might be great for someone who is REALLY into the numbers, but I think that even then they might find some of it a little short sighted. While I found that I could just jump into the game. It was difficult to get a grasp on some of the things and how the worked. There were not patch notes. I looked on the website, and the forums for the game briefly and didn't see any mention of them. I simmed the game for the month, and The Tigers were in last. I simmed the game up to current, and The Tigers were in last. WAY last. While I don't expect the game to see the turn around that The Tigers have had this year. MANY of the other teams seemed out of place as well. If you have no way to imprive your players, or play, there really doesn't seem to be a reason to play the game. Even for stats and numbers. Why change the line up, if it's not going to matter in the end. Why trade or bring up other pitchers, if they are still just going to do crappy? I was sort of disappointed with what I got in Baseball Mogul 2007. Seeing some of the other games that have come out recently, or are due out soon, it seems that they might be the better way to go. I believe they are even in the same price range. I didn't play the 2006 version of this game, but I would have to say overall, this is just a average game. Average, to sub par graphics, in ability to really see any improvement in your players. Eh. I would really have to say pass on this one, unless you are REALLY into the numbers and what to get all the games.

If I had to rate it on a 1-100. No more than 70. I wasn't wow'ed by anything in this game, and while I felt the urge to come back. I still didn't find that I liked the game. It was more than I just really wanted to see if it was me or the game that wasn't cooperating.